The Unicorn Rehabilitation Support Group
by Glacies
Summary: Roda hates almost all the people she's working with. Moc has been hunting since he was young. Noir is apparently invincible. And Lag - poor, poor Lag, is going to need a lot more than patience if he's going to turn them into a proper group of Unicorn Hunters who aren't really Unicorn Hunters at all.


I am attempting to write a serious story... about unicorns and Lag. Well, it's crack/serious.

And I dig the deadpan snarker Lag, who grows up and kinds of sheds his naïve personality enough to go, _oh wow, my mom sucked and now that I think about it, so did my childhood._ Anyway. The story.

* * *

_And he could feel the horn, piercing right below his heart, and he smiled. "It's quite curious," he rasped, blood heavy in his mouth,"how you are the last unicorn, how I am the last hunter of unicorns, and neither of us shall leave this lilac wood quite the same. For either I die, or you die, but there is something beautiful in the mortality of beings such as ourselves."_

~Harrison R. Faulkner

_The Lilac Wood_

* * *

"_'I'll never truly leave you, children.' The unicorn whispered, her majestic horn silhouetted against the sky. Her coat shone a pale gold, and her fur sparkled like diamonds. 'I will always live on in your hearts, and you will live on in mine, so long as you remember to believe in me.'"_

I almost threw up at that sentence. Well, at any of those sentences, really, but the adoring eyes of the little girls I was reading to made me continue the sentence. It was hard, though, and I could feel my resolve slipping.

"_The children sniffled, reaching out for their best friend as she pushed off into the air, spreading her majestic gold wings -"_

And... wings. I honestly don't think this day could get any worse. I swallowed down some bile and forced myself to keep reading aloud. Would this count as being a masochist? I mean, if I really thought about it -

"_-and flew away into the sunset, leaving behind fallen trails of glitter that glimmered like the stars themselves."_

-this definitely counted as a form of torture, but I wasn't really enjoying it, so I wasn't a masochist. I was more doing it because children have the cutest eyes in the world. The whole experience was more like a very successful attempt at redefining torture, anyway.

_Oh my friggin' Empress_. Why why why why. Why did they have to pick a book about unicorns the _one_ time I came to help out in the orphanage? It was just my luck. My horrible, horrible luck. I glanced up at the girls I was reading the story to.

The seven year old – Brianna, I think? - was staring at me with teary eyes, looking like she was going to bawl over the atrocity the unicorn did to the children by leaving them. The five year old, Tammy, was chewing on mane of a unicorn shaped plush. The same exact plush that was sending fight or flight symbols through my brain.

And I, fourteen years and bordering on homicidal Lag Seeing, was ready to turn tail and go hide in my un-unicorn infested apartment. And by apartment, I mean the tiny room in Sylvette's house that I share with Niche.

I spared another glance at Tammy, who was now trying to rip the unicorn's head off with her jaws. My mother's words practically ran through my head: _Well, Lag, at least that means she's trying to slay the thing. Children are so resourceful these days. You should be more like them. Well, Tammy at least._

Was it wrong that I hadn't seen my mother since I was seven, and that her voice was still stuck in my head? Yes? Huh. That's weird. I think it's a testament to the following fact:

Parents are really good at screwing their kids over for the rest of their life.

Did you know that when Zazie was much younger (around four), his parents took him ice skating? And Zazie, being the drama magnet that he is, managed to find the one spot where there wasn't any ice and nearly drowned? And that he now has a somewhat-crippling fear of ice? It's not exactly surprising that parents manage to scar their kids. They're humans. They mess up.

But sometimes, there are just those spectacular mess ups that get to the point where they have to be classified as something else. And this – well, this was definitely one of those situations. Anne was really really good at scaring me for life, and guess what? It definitely shows. Some days I wonder if she even realized the amount of damage she has inevitably caused me by telling me stories of murderous unicorns who stabbed wayward sons (or just about anyone, really) in the trachea or just about any major blood artery ever with theirs horns.

Also, they were poisonous unicorns, because _why not? _

So while these girls were being raised with legends of unicorns being protectors of children, I had been raised with a mother who devoted her time to reading me stories about people killing unicorns. If I wanted a bedtime story, it was about killer unicorns. If I wanted a book to read, it was about unicorns. If I was sick, then dammit, I had no choice but to listen to my mom ramble on about my family's history of... wait for it... killing unicorns.

Well, it was like that until she all up and vanished on me. Then it became my aunt's job to properly terrify the shit out of me with all things regarding unicorns. Does that count as an abusive family? I\m beginning to think it does.

I considered giving the same lecture to the girls that I gave to the girls that I knew when I was seven. I'm pretty sure it went along the lines of: _Unicorns aren't pretty. They don't protect people, they don't have wings. They're bloodthirsty killing machines that are an abomination to the world itself, and they have poison in their horns. They'd kill you before letting you near them, and the only time you'd get to ride one is if it gored you with it's horn. But don't worry! My ancestors killed the last one a couple of hundreds of years ago._

Needless to say, younger me was not the most popular, though I did posses a vivid imagination that was not helped by my aunt's (and my mother's) attempts to destroy a happy, childish fantasy. To this day, their rabid minded hatred of the creatures unnerved me, and now – four years later, it still shows.

Because I'm staring at a plush unicorn right now, and every muscle in my body is screaming _find a weapon_ and _run, _and that kind of just shows that my mother went terribly wrong with her parenting somewhere along the line. It was probably before the whole thing with the fire and the getting kidnapped and the tying me to a post in the middle of nowhere, but she messed up. Big time.

I swallowed again, choking down some bile (or Sylvette's soup. They were the same... right?) and glancing over at the book that was resting innocently in my hands, all cotton candy colors and sweetness.

I slammed the book shut, placing it off to the side. "I think that's enough, girls. Maybe we can finish the book tomorrow?" I offered. Good news – no more unicorns tonight. Bad news – lots more to come tomorrow. It was kind of like pulling a band-aid off, I supposed, if you did at once, it hurt but was over. If you hesitated, then it hurt more but you delayed the inevitable. And that's what's important, I guess – delaying the inevitable.

...Zazie was right. _I am such a wuss. _

"No!" Brianna growled out. "I want to know what happens to the unicorn!" The girl then proceeded to snarl at me. Full on, lips over teeth snarl. I was taken aback at the sight. Who even raised this girl? A pack of wolves?

_No,_ my mother – no, _Anne's_ voice said. _The elder child, Brianna, was probably raised by unicorns, as snarling is a classic aggression and intimidation technique -_

"Tomorrow it is! See you guys later!" I announced happily, standing up and grabbing my bag and trying to ignore my crazy mother's voice in my head. I pulled on my scarf, wrapping it around my neck a few times. I was an expert at putting it on with one hand, a result of first thirty-four attempts that had ranged with somehow tying knots to almost strangling myself with my own uniform. "Have a nice night!"

"I want the rest of the story-"

Whatever the kid was trying to say, it was cut off when I shut the door to the orphanage. The streets were almost deserted, and I started back towards home. The eternal sun shone above me, and I smiled, shielding my eyes as I tried to look into it. It was something of a habit. A bad habit, but a habit nonetheless.

The city was almost silent. The only sounds that I could hear was my own footsteps, the clatter of hoof beats on cobblestones (probably a Bee returning from a delivery), and the scrape of my bag against my thigh. This was... nice. Really, sort of nice. It wasn't the sort of nice I was used to – as in, I wasn't chasing around the country, laughing with my friends, or sitting on a train with Niche, but still. It was nice.

Of course, with me, nice things don't generally show up very often – but hey. It was all with the job of a Letter Bee, so I was determined to enjoy this little moment of peace for all the time it lasted.

I continued my walk back to Sylvette's house, and stared up at the night sky. Clouds were starting to gather above me, so it would probably rain soon, but that was okay, because it hadn't rained for a week or two, and – _oh!_ Remember how I said that I was going to enjoy the little bit of peace I had, because peace and nice things don't come around a lot?

That peace lasted about twenty seven seconds, and then everything went to hell in a hand basket. Because I was simply walking down the road staring at the sky one second, and then all of a sudden, I wasn't just walking home. I was also staring down a way too big and way too fast white bullet of death (ie, the goddamn unicorn that had just charged through a glass window, and was accompanied by a chorus of screams).

I froze, because really, all of my childhood horror stories hit me in the face, and certain facts decided to make themselves very well known, such as:

a): unicorns exist.

b): a unicorn just charged through a glass window and is heading straight for me.

c): unicorns are the devil's steeds, and they apparently exist, and I think they eat human flesh, and oh god, _what possessed God to even make these creatures_?

d): that horn looks really really sharp and is headed _for my chest_.

And thought number e (which was my favorite): unicorns secrete a deadly toxin through their horn known as taint, which also has to do with a unicorn's peculiar ability to purify any substance by drawing the poison into their horn, which they then use to _murder the crap out of anything that gets in their way_. Actually, according to my darling mother Anne, it's more anything that they see, but let's not get caught up in the specifics – it's still_ a frickin' murder horn that's intended to kill you._

So, it's kind of completely understandable that my muscles all tensed up, like one of those poor rabbits when they're being hunted, and I now had a legitimate excuse for the whole flee or fight thing going on. And this was a bit scarier than the plush doll that was being chewed on by Tammy. This was a flesh and blood murder horse with a knife taped to it's forehead and it's target was me.

My heart raced. My blood pounded in my veins, and I'm pretty sure I got tunnel vision so that all I saw was the murder horse. The clatter of hooves filled my brain like some sacrificial music. I braced myself for my impending death.

_Mother, Anne, whatever you want me to call you- I'm sorry that I never took your advice and believed in unicorns, because I'm about to die, and I guess that you were a good mother, in a way -_

The unicorn reached me -

and dropped to it's knees, sliding forward a bit. It was still way to close, because the murder horn was an inch away from my stomach, but the murder horn wasn't in my stomach, and that's what matters.

_Actually, I take that all back. You were never a good mom._

I swallowed. "Um." I am such a good speaker, and that's the cue for me to raise the sarcasm hand. "Hey, what are you doing, looking so evil and goat like, and why do you have floppy ears? And blood smeared across your body and horn and – oh shit, you killed somebody!" My breath caught in my throat as the unicorn neighed happily, not noticing that it was covered in the blood of the innocent. It nudged me with it's snout.

I slapped it, any fear gone. "You can't just murder people! It doesn't work that way!" And there it was. I was trying to reason with a unicorn. A unicorn covered in blood and gore, and today was just not my day. It whinnied again, and got to it's feet. I continued to stare.

It pranced around me. _Anne, I think you conveniently forgot something from your lessons_. Mainly the fact that the murder goat horse isn't actively trying to kill me.

You know, I wonder if Gauche ever had to deal with these sorts of things when he was a Bee. I've come to the conclusion that he probably didn't have to, and that's why he lived to the ripe old age of eighteen.

The sound of footsteps caught my attention, and the unicorn bristled. It's eyes narrowed and it reared back, and – right now, _dodging the murder horn would be a great idea._ I ducked out of it's way, and a pair of figures rounded the corner. They were, thankfully, not a unicorn, but they were also a person.

And apparently, unicorns still do the kill humans bit, because the murder horse lowered it''s horn and charged, straight at one very confused Connor Kluff and one extremely homicidal Zazie.


End file.
